How unchecked capitalism and massive inequality made America a bully nation

The following is an excerpt from the new book Bully Nation by Charles Derber & Yale R. Magrass (University Press of Kansas, 2016):

On October 1, 2014, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that a
Burger King franchise in Ferndale, Michigan, near Detroit, had bullied a
part-time worker, Claudette Wilson, by sending her home two hours early
for not positioning pickles correctly on her burgers. As Judge Arthur
J. Anchan put it, the company illegally sent Wilson home for failing to
“put pickles on her sandwiches in perfect squares.”

Such absurd but intimidating and humiliating bullying of a very
low-paid worker was retaliation aimed at intimidating Wilson from
continuing her efforts to organize low-wage Burger King workers. A few
days earlier, she had stopped at the store to ask workers coming off
their shifts to fill out a questionnaire about their wages. A manager
had written her up for violating the store’s “loitering and
solicitation” policy, something that Judge Anchan also said was
“protected activity” and thus illegal. Wilson said she had not done the
pickles quite perfectly because of her anger about the earlier unfair
treatment.

The story gets bigger because Wilson was one of several workers,
including Romell Frazier, who were members of a group called D15, part
of the Fast Food Forward Network trying to unionize Michigan Burger
Kings. Wilson’s “pickle problem” was really part of a larger and more
serious pickle faced by the workers. The Michigan Burger King franchisee
was systematically going after workers who were part of D15 and
threatening them with sanctions, including firing.

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